Monday, August 19, 2013

Social Listening – Are Your Consumers Liking It?

At a time when there is substantial noise
being raised over an individual’s privacy, especially on social media, NetBase
and J.D. Power and Associates conducted a survey on 1,062 consumers to find out
if consumers know that companies are listening to them on the social media and
how they feel about it.

The study reveals some interesting insights
–

According to the Altimeter
Group, 42% of companies have social listening as one of their top 3 priorities

But consumers are apprehensive towards this
popular business trend and increasingly expressing their angst over it.
However, the nature of their response hasn’t been consistent either.

51% of the consumers want to
talk about organizations and their products; but they do not want these organizations
to listen to their conversations.

In fact, 43% of them believe
that social listening is an intrusion into their privacy

But, completely contrasting to
the above two ideas, there are also 32% of consumers who are completely unaware
of the fact that organizations are listening to their social conversations.

Another important aspect that
this study revealed was that 48% of consumers wanted companies to listen to
them on social media and use the conversations for product/service improvements.

But there was also another 58%
of them who opined that companies must use social listening only to respond to
and solve customer complaints.

But the real surprise was here-

42% people want brands to
respond without fail to their positive comments

64% of consumers insist that
brands must respond to social comments only when spoken to

This is a challenge to social media chiefs because
such expectations from your social audience means that you must somehow, know
beforehand how each of them is going to react to your social engagement
efforts.

Now, we acknowledge that listening to,
engaging with and understanding their social audience (customers, influencers,
fans, stakeholders and even the competitors) are the three basic and
fundamental principles of social media engagement for any brand marketers and the
organization’s leadership.

But, given the recent reservation among the
consumers towards being listened to by brands on the social channels, the onus
is now on the social media marketers, brand managers, CXOs and even social
media monitoring and analytics people like us to delve deep into this new development
and find new, feasible ways to, as the study’s
infographic says, “demonstrate how listening doesn’t intrude but instead
builds relationships”.